Dispatch from the Digital Frontier: This Crazy Gamification Craze

Isn’t itintriguing how the same good idea pops up at roughly the same timefrom a number of dissociated people in far-flung locations? I guessthat’s how we collectively come to know that something is a goodidea whose time has come.

Take gamification,for instance. Suddenly, it seems, “gamification” is oneverybody’s lips. Can we put a game on our Website? Should we startoffering badges to frequent and/or loyal customers … or maybe tobring in new customers? How about adding a Jeopardy-style game to ourcourse? What if we sponsored some kind of scavenger hunt?

Gamificationproponents tout the benefits of this approach to marketing (and, formany, marketing is what gamification is all about):

• Promote awareness that leads to adoption of a brand, product, or service.

• Induce participation and attachment, again, with and to a brand.

• Make tedious activities (like completing marketing surveys) seem less odious.

Some of this isgreat news, particularly when those outside of marketing find theirinterest piqued. At DevLearn|10, for example, gamification was frontand center during the program and at the expo. Byron Reeves gave akeynote presentation on the topic, there were case studies, focusgroups, concurrent sessions … one vendor even put up an alternatereality game that ran alongside the conference (for which yours trulywas one of the puppet masters). For those of us who, for severalyears, have been promoting the value of games beyond entertainment,this is a welcome trend.

But there aretroubling aspects to this recent craze. Using the word “gamification”does seem to neutralize objections to using games for business oreducation purposes, but it also dilutes the complexities and rigor ofsolid game design and implementation. Promoters of gamificationfrequently focus on the benefits, however transitory they may be, ofthe “fun factor” (indeed, “funware” is an alternate term forthis phenomenon) for gaining attention for a brand or product whileneglecting the longer-term values of sustained community-building,collaboration, collective knowledge development, and a host of otherdesirable outcomes. Games can make us smarter, but gamification, Ifear, dumbs down the transformative potential of this medium to nomore than a marketing gimmick.

What should thegamification conversation really be about?

Certainly, games andgame environments bring an element of fun, even lightheartedness, tosituations and tasks that might otherwise be dreary or uninteresting.Players immerse themselves in the game “world” where they arepresented with situations that require decision-making or conflictresolution. The consequences of their decisions are real even whenthe environment in which they make them is not, so bold actions canbe tested. The context for those decisions can shift within the game,allowing for each decision and action to create additional, even new,meaning. Consequences, feedback, and reward structures are relevantto the game world and the game play, and serve to maintain players’interest when presented with new content and situations.

All of this happensbecause of two critical components embedded within every game:

• Mechanics is the umbrella term that covers the way a game works and the interactions that occur between players and the game. Game mechanics address everything from how the game world represents the physical world to what kinds of actions a player can take in a game scenario to what interactions are available between players. While certain conventions have developed in the use of game mechanics in online games (e.g., A-S-D-W key combinations used to move an avatar around the screen, space bar to make the avatar jump), each game has its own mechanics that are particular to that game’s concept and intent.

• Metrics are the measurements that result from game play. Games trap metrics for every interaction between players, and between players and the game world.

In analyzing gamemechanics and their ensuing metrics, decision-makers can gainimportant insights into the kinds of interactions that yield desiredresults with the target audience. Does one kind of interaction resultin the player pursuing deeper levels of content? Which rewardstructure correlates to higher referral rates or to greater sales?What kinds of mechanics produce the greatest content retention overtime for the content domain embodied by the game?

As Eric Schmidt andso many others remind us, the influence of games in our onlineexperiences and our culture is growing quickly. We can exploit thisinfluence in beneficial ways. Doing so requires an adherence to theprinciples of data-driven design and evaluation at which e-Learningprofessionals have become so proficient in the past 15 years.